Storyboard.. kinda

     Since I kind of did this out of order, I'm putting up my standards and objectives.  now...

     I kind of wanted the photos to increase in their intensity and emotive power as the video progressed, and I also wanted to time it with the music, but there were some photos that I wanted the viewer to pause at and be forced to contemplate (for example, the men in the gas chamber with the somber man in suspenders gazing at the camera with an emptiness that I have never seen rivaled).
     I also wanted the photos to progress somewhat chronologically, and ending with the photo of the American soldiers looking on in horror at the bodies of the men in the death train.  I wanted the viewer to put themselves in the shoes of those soldiers.  And then wrap it up with some sort of summative statement.  I settled on a quote from Adolf Hitler that can be found at http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/holocaust-quotations.html.

UEN Standards:	Standard 7 from the US History II Core Curriculum
Purpose of the activity:	To get students to understand and analyze the terror and gravity of the Jewish Holocaust
Objective:	Students will watch the video and participate in a journal activity where they can record their thoughts on the subject at hand, for analysis and review in a discussion in pairs, then as a class.
Script, narration, or text	text is captions accompanying photos and contextual information to give the photograph more meaning and intensity.

teaching my mom :)

So, I got the opportunity the other day to be up at home, and I taught my mom how to be more safe on the internet, and was able to help her feel more secure online.  She is pretty cautious about the internet in general, and I was able to alleviate some pretty real concerns for her.
     The first thing that she liked learning about was the temporary credit card number that could be set up to make the purchase and evaporate after that so your credit card number never really gets out in cyberspace.  She is always cautious, and makes online purchases on a computer that's hooked up to a hard line, so that she doesn't have her "credit card up in the air for crooks to sniff out."
     She als appreciated the discussion we had about multiple email addresses and having those accounts forward to your real email that you don't give out to anybody.  I actually had her set up her own personal Gmail account so that she could have access to google calendars as well.
     All in all, I think it went very well.  She is definitely going to implement some of the things she learned into her everyday life.  And I'm never putting my debit card number in to buy something ever again.  too scary.

Internet Safety

      I watched the hour long Frontline Documentary which was enriching and informative.  I also read through Elder Ballard's 2003 talk "Let Our Voices Be Heard."  I learned some really interesting things.  In many ways it was an interesting mile marker on the road of the internet, to see how far we've come in 5 years.  Myspace has all but disappeared, and Facebook now has over 800 million users, almost half of them accessing their accounts on mobile devices.
      But most things I already knew.  Cyberbullying is a dangerous practice that can have harmful and lasting effects.  There are predators online, and for the most part, kids know how to handle themselves online.  If they want to seek out dangerous things, they know how, and if they want to avoid them, they know how.
      The internet is always a willing listener.  We are more vocal than perhaps we might otherwise be in our normal lives.  I feel like as much as this documentary scared me, it didn't broadcast the wonderful power for good the internet can have.  It is important to be aware of the dangers so that we can use the internet to its full potential.
      Elder Ballard alluded to the wonderful attributes of the web, as well as cautioned families that Satan will use whatever tools necessary to attack the basic unit of society.  He stressed the idea that we are free to choose, to act, and not to be acted upon.  I think that when we feel that we have lost our ability to control our internet habits, we are no longer acting, but being acted upon.  We should be aware of those dangers.

APPS

     Ok, so I got this app about a year ago, but it is without a doubt the most informative app I know of!  It is probably the definitive app on the Louvre and the thousands of works of art at the museum.  It only has a small percentage of the works of art at the museum stored on the iPod itself, but that's still thousands of images, as well as captions for them.  The more famous works have additional information about the artists, the styles they worked in, the time period and much more.
     Ok, so as far as using it educationally, for those kids in your AP art history class, you could have them download the app (free!) and use it as a review tool, because the works of art and the artist are arranged on the screen in a way that makes it easy to cover either one or the other up, kind of in a flash cardy sort of way.  It's a great place for information if you need a quick fact, date, or even for like a bell quiz, or for quizzing before the bell rings.

Annotated Videos!

I REALLY enjoyed this project.  I took it a little crazy in fact.  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-YWQQjKBsw
so turns out that the video has to have some sort of educational application, so I downloaded a preview for an american tale, Fieval Goes West, and annotated it to highlight the themes of the film in terms of their attributes that reflect American Exceptionalism, Manifest Destiny, and westward expansion in 19th century America.  This helps the kids to pull what I see out of a video, and it gives me a chance to infuse what I want them to be thinking about while they watch something without pausing and explaining.  I also get a chance be funny..  Because you have to be funny.  or else nobody's going to pay attention.  Anyway, the annotation stuff works for any video you want to upload, on any subject.  I really enjoyed it.  Here's the educationally annotated vid.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqEvZIh4k64

Pinterest

What a cool website!  I can go all over the web looking for cool pictures and other things that interest me, and "pin" them up onto boards that I specify.  Not gonna lie, interest feels really girly to me.  maybe that will change as the website gets bigger.
I think that this website has a lot of great potential for students to learn, it's a great place to find quality photos, possibly for group projects and things, also a great place for me to ask my students to tell me about themselves.  I could see their pinterest boards and know a little more about them that I might have known before.  In that sense, Pinterest is  a great get to know you tool.  I could also have them post pictures with captions that show what they've learned about the picture, or the person in a picture for a review game, or study help.  I could have them review my boards with captions underneath to help them learn, possibly like flashcards or something.
Difficulty might arise in having them go looking around for pictures on the internet.  That is getting more and more risky.  But all in all, it's a great technology, and fun to work with.

I used the search terms "obvious copyright infringement"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NIYtxLjgzM

It's basically the music video for Lone Star's "Amazing" with a few modifications, like inserting photos of the creator's girlfriend.   The beginning of the music video gives the information on who wrote the song, who produced the song, and under what label the album can be found under.  The person who uploaded the video didn't create it for educational purposes, but used it for entertainment purposes.  The material looked pirated, and I doubt that Lone Star granted permission for their music video to be used in this way, and that the video creator asked for that permission. The video creator may have used the video as an assignment for an editing class.  But I doubt it.  But, YouTube still has it up... So I guess my question is does YouTube view this as an artistic creation, that is covered under intellectual reserve or something?  Because it's still up, and I've personally tried to look for Eagles songs on the internet, and some I can find, and some I can't.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cLEgPeE6mU&feature=related


This video is a montage of clips from the hit comedy "The Office."  The clips were obviously put together by a fan of the show. But Here I am at the same question that I had on the other clip.  If YouTube feels like it can stay up on their website, is it legal?  does NBC care if the creator of the video is violating copyright?  I feel like I'm really not good at even knowing where to look for someone violating copyright.  One good thing; the guy does cite the source, he gives full credit to NBC in the video description.  Maybe I'm making this harder than it has to be.  .  

Here's my website!

Here is the link to my website:

https://sites.google.com/site/tallred6/home-1

I put up a slideshow on the main page that has images pertinent to the courses I'm planning on teaching, I embedded a couple videos that were related to history teaching as well as how I felt about my students.  I also put links up to some sites and things to make it a little more interactive.

How I think I'll use my website in my own teaching

     I think that this tool will be a great help for me as I try to help my kids in any way possible.  People are getting more and more information than ever online, and I want to be able to be up on the current lingo and practices for online savviness.
     I think I have a fear of becoming irrelevant.  I am afraid that I won't be cool and hip and with it as i get older and older.  I recently looked at a group of freshmen walking from the Cannon Center up to campus.  This group of guys were particularly stylish, sporting tiny little slippers, with long black socks and shorter-than-I-am-comfortable-with shorts, cardigans, v-necks, and (if the previous image wasn't jarring enough) wide-brimmed, ghetto lid hats.   I  confess.  I am firmly out of touch with current trends.  So maybe I can keep up technologically.

This is the first post.

I imagine looking back on this post as early emails I sent when I was young.  Very simple, a little undirected, and overly juvenile.  But I suppose that's ok.